


Good Night, Good Luck, and Good Riddance to Good Garbage

by lalalalalawhy



Category: The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: F/F, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalawhy/pseuds/lalalalalawhy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DATELINE: The wild blue yonder! The question on everyone's lips: Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart? The answer in nobody's ears: In 1938, America's soaring sweetheart faked her disappearance at sea in order to serve as the American Victory Commission's covert one-woman air force. </p><p>Now, thanks to classified chrono engineering and a stiff dose of McCarthyism, Amelia Earhart - the fearless flier - is under investigation by the FBI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Night, Good Luck, and Good Riddance to Good Garbage

The G-man’s cigarette smoke floated up, like clouds on a July day on the Kansas prairie. Amelia Earhart, fearless flier, grounded for the moment, sat in the chair on the opposite side of the table and curled her lip in disgust.

Amelia was used to wind on her face and fresh air in her lungs, the sunlight streaming through clouds she danced through in her Lockheed Electra. She exalted in flying, and she excelled at it. She was proud to be a lady pilot, and the sky was where she belonged, not this dingy room in the basement of some FBI building.

Unlike the wild blue yonder she was used to, everything here seemed in grayscale with some accents of beige. The room was lit by a single bulb and furnished with nothing but a chair, a table, a clock ticking away the seconds, and a one-way mirror. She was, infuriatingly, on the mirror side, hooked up to a lie detector machine.

It was humiliating! Insulting! Amelia Earhart never lied. Lying is for Nazis and children who didn’t know any better, she thought.

The G-man mopped his brow, shuffled a piece of paper to the bottom of the stack in front of him, and began the questions.

“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?”

“Are you kidding? I once saved the very idea of democracy. Literally. I thwarted a couple’a Nazis back in Ancient Greece who wanted to turn democracy - from the Greek demos, meaning people - into Nazicracy, from the Kraut word for Nazi! Thanks to me, it didn’t work out, and you can continue to salute the red, white, and blue.”

“Have you ever associated with a member of the Communist party?”

“Listen mister, I fought on the Eastern Front with brave soldiers. I will not have you drag their names through the mud for your own enjoyment.”

Amelia didn’t mention the autumn months she spent on the Eastern Front in 1943, alternately helping a particular tank commander take out some Nazi scum. She and Mariya Oktyabrskaya, widowed and out for blood, fought Nazis by day and sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, at the bank of the Dnieper River by night.

Her Mariya, so sad when they met, but so strong and fueled by vengeance. She was hungry, but whether it was for revenge or for love Amelia never could tell.

She knew it could never last - so little could in the life of a cross-time lady pilot. Still, the goodbye was hard. They curled around each other in a sleeping bag they had begun sharing for body warmth and ended up sharing for different reasons entirely.

“Must you go, Amelia? There are so many Nazi cockroaches to fight here in Smolensk, and beyond that even more. Where you are going you say there is only one, maybe two.”

“That may be true, Mariya, but there’s no telling what one or two Nazis could do when they have all of history to ruin. If I don’t go, there may not be a Smolensk tomorrow.”

“My solnishko, my sun,” Mariya said, “I will think of you always. Every time I see the sun and the stars, I will think of you, flying free.”

“That’s real sweet of you Mariya. I’ll think of you whenever I smell Nazi blood, which I expect will be often.”

“You should call me Mariska,” Mariska said. “And I know what I am to do. I am naming my tank after you.”

“Describe your relationship with one Abigail Adams.” The G-man’s voice wrenched Amelia out of a pleasant daydream and into what counted as the present (for now).

“Why are you asking questions you already know the answer to?” Amelia asked, her anger ringing in her voice.

“We need to hear it from you,” the G-man said. “We need to know if you’re lying. What is the nature of your relationship with Agent Adams?”

“I’m Amelia Earhart,” Amelia said, “I never lie.”

“We need to know if your relationship with Agent Adams will endanger the national security of the United States,” the G-man said and took another pull on his cigarette.

Amelia glared at him. “Do you know what’s actually endangering the national security of the United States of America?” she asked. “Do you? I’ll tell you. It’s Nazis! Loose in the timestream! As we speak! And if you hadn’t called me in, I’d be able to do what I do best -- save the good ol’ U.S. of A. from those who would try to do her harm!” Amelia smacked her fist down on the table.

“Perhaps a different line of questioning, then,” the G-man said, again shuffling a piece of paper to the top of the pile. “Do you have any foreign associates?”

“Plenty!” Amelia said. “Haven’t ya heard? We’re at war, and do you know who the enemy of my enemy is?”

The G-man stared at her, silent and unblinking.

“That’s right, she’s my friend!”

“Please name your foreign associates and the relationship you share.”

"Well where do you want me to start? Chronologically? Geographically? Because, listen buster, I've had foreign associations you can only dream of!"

"Indulge me."

"Well then, I'll have you know that I am a close, personal friend of Queen Lizzie One."

"And what was the nature of your relationship to Queen Elizabeth?"

"What do you think it was? We went toe-to-toe with Nazis and came out the other side!"

"There were Nazis in Elizabethan England." It wasn't a question, and it made Amelia nearly vibrate out of her seat with annoyance.

"Of course there were, you dingbat! Why else would I be there?" Amelia decided not to mention that the visit had been motivated at least as much by personal feelings. Good ol' Bess. She'd been a firecracker when they first met, during a Nazi assassination attempt on the young queen's life. She and Amelia had some good times, over the years.

When Amelia had to leave her the first time, Bess had promised never to marry. Amelia told her that it wasn't necessary: she knew what they shared. Bess had kept her promise anyway.

Amelia almost smiled at the memory, but didn't want to give the G-man the satisfaction.

"So you have ties to Queen Elizabeth. Anyone else?"

"How much time ya got?" Amelia asked, shaking her head. She remembered adventures with her French chéries, Joan, Marie, and Carla, her time in India with Jahanara, full of sweet chai kisses. In her memories she rode into with in battle with Semiramis and drank honey wine with Nefertiti. And that was just what came to mind - she had had so many friends, sisters in arms, and lights of her life throughout history. It would take days to recount them all. "Because my time is valuable," she said, bringing her attention back to the G-man sitting front and center. It took all of her willpower, forged in battle against the Nazis, not to sneer at him.  

"Let's return, then, to these shores. I'll ask you again: what is your personal relationship with Agent Adams?"

"In this line of business, boyo, personal is professional."

"You seem to be dodging the question, Miss Earhart."

"I'm not," she said, raising her eyebrows. "I just want to hear you ask it."

"Fine," the G-man said, and massaged his brow with his brow briefly. "The purpose of this interrogation is to determine whether or not your personal relationships with women in general and with Agent Adams in particular represent a threat to national security."

"Nearly there..." Amelia said, smiling a little too smugly. Her eyes flicked to the clock, and back to the G-man.

"As you well know, the Roosevelt administration was honeycombed with homosexuals. We are attempting to eradicate any bastion of that from the federal government, as it poses a grave threat to the safety and security of every American, man, woman, and child. And so I ask you once again, what is the relationship between yourself and Agent Abigail Adams of the American Victory Commission?"

"Aha!" Amelia crowed. "You finally said it! 'Eradicating homosexuals.' Why, that's the damnedest thing I've ever heard. You and your pal McCarthy are trying to eradicate all the homosexuals so that you can, what, work better? Not have any competition for the affections of your secretary?"

The G-man looked like he was ready to say something. "No, you listen up. There's a word for folks who say people shouldn't be who they want to be and shouldn't love who they love. And that word sir?" Amelia was out of her seat with her finger shoved in the G-man's face. "That word is Nazi!"

The man's eyes widened as he brought his watch up to his mouth. "Heinrich, she knows," he said. There was noise of a scuffle out in the hallway, the thuds of fists connecting and heavy bodies falling to the ground.

The not-quite G-man suddenly pushed back from the table as if to rise, but before he could move more than three inches, Abby burst through the door, with her gun trained on his forehead.

"Put your arms up, you _damn, dirty Kraut!_ " Abby shouted, voice dripping with disdain. Amelia beamed at her with pride and then turned on her heel and scowled at the Nazi.

“Now, you listen up, Nazi. You may be a Nazi that has infiltrated the FBI, but I met J. Edgar special and I know he isn’t one. Which means that your whacky ideas about what is and isn’t okay and what you ought and ought not to do about people’s personal lives are alive and well deep within the American government. When I found out you and your Nazi friends were infiltrating the FBI, I saw an opportunity. If you could be found out, then your only option would be to do as we say… or go back to your Fuhrer and tell him that you failed.”

The Nazi seemed to seemed to deflate a little bit. “Vat do you vant from us?” he asked, all semblance of a Midwest accent gone from his voice.

“You are going to work within the FBI to ensure that these ridiculous interrogations end! You are going to tell your bosses that they are producing poor results, that you’re losing good talent, and that these practices of discrimination are about as bad as what the Nazis did in Germany. In short, Mister Nazi G Man, you are going to tell the truth.”

He looked balefully up at her. “But… this is a...”

“You’re absolutely right! This is an instance of reverse-Lavender-Scare Blackmail. And you are going to work to make sure no American man or woman ever has to go through it again. Or else me and my girlfriend -- that’s right, I said girlfriend -- Abbs here are going to come back and give you what’s for. I may be out and about in time, saving the world from your Nazi friends, but Abby’s gonna be right here, always watching you. Isn’t that right Abbs?”

“You know it, hon,” Abby said to Amelia. “I’ve got my eyes on you, you damn dirty Kraut. If you make so much as a peep about it, you’re dead meat.”

“Do we make ourselves clear, Nazi?”

He nodded furiously. “Ya, ya mein frauen. I vill do as you say.”

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse us, Agent Adams and I have some very important administrative business to do. And I can tell from your expression that you know I don’t mean paperwork.”

Amelia took Abby’s hand in hers and brought it up for a brief kiss. She’d be in her Lockheed Electra again soon, galavanting off to stop Nazis in their tracks wherever she could, but for now she could afford a little R&R with her best gal.

**Author's Note:**

> Amelia Earhart, Fearless Flier, my favorite time traveler! In honor of Back to the Future Day (Week), I wanted to write some time traveling, and who better than Amelia, flitting through the time stream and romancing all the ladies? Nobody! There's nobody better!
> 
> Keen readers will note the reference to the movie Good Night and Good Luck and the very real histories of both the Red and Lavender Scares in the United States. The Red Scare was the fear that Communist operatives were hiding out, collecting government secrets, and the Lavender Scare was the fear that homosexuals were hiding out, you know, kissing. 
> 
> For more on the Lavender Scare, check out this wiki article: [Lavender Scare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare). 
> 
> Special thanks to [Mansion](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mansion) and [secretsofluftnarp](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luftie/pseuds/secretsofluftnarp) for allowing themselves to be test audiences!


End file.
